Rex Cramphorn 1941-1991

In 1976 Cramphorn joined the Old Tote as a director; the association lasted until 1978, when he
and Sharman resigned in frustration with the Tote’s lack of commitment to more adventurous work. He and Sharman established the Paris Company; its mission was to present large scale new Australian work. Supported by Patrick White, Dorothy Hewitt and others, it was based in the historic old Australian Picture Palace in Liverpool Street, Sydney, a building largely designed by Walter Burley Griffin. Sharman directed the opening production, Hewitt’s Pandora’s Cross, and Cramphorn the second, Louis Nowra’s Visions. In The Sydney Morning Herald H.G. Kippax hailed it as ‘Theatre of high interest’. Sadly, the interest was insufficient: neither the Paris Company nor the theatre survived.

In 1980 Cramphorn established A Shakespeare Company under the auspices of the University of Sydney. Ruth Cracknell, John Howard and Ron Haddrick were in the first production, Measure for Measure. It was a play to which Cramphorn returned several times. The years from 1981 until 1985 were Cramphorn’s most productive: he worked with the Playbox Theatre Company in Melbourne, first as resident director and later as co-artistic director. His productions there included Thérèse Radic’s A Whip Round for Percy Grainger, Barry Dickins’ A Couple of Broken Hearts, Peter Handke’s My Foot My Tutor and Racine’s Britannicus (1982), Antony and Cleopatra, Edward Bond’s Summer, Terry Johnson’s Insignificance and Fugard’s ‘Master Harold’…and the Boys (1983), Molière’s Scapin, Terry Johnson’s Unsuitable for Adults and David Williamson’s The Removalists (1984), and  Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age and Roy Mathew’s A Spring Song (1985). Also that year Cramphorn directed his adaptation of Molière’s A Doctor in Spite of Himself for Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf Theatre.

Around this time Cramphorn sought funding for an ensemble company which would work towards the establishment of a performance style arising from a close study of classic texts ‘with an aesthetic which is appropriate to an heir of English-speaking tradition with a multicultural future in a Southeast Asian location … A classic company, capable of drawing from the best available academic and professional resources and developing a valid Australian contribution to world theatre.’ The company did not eventuate. Despairing of the frustrations of short term funding and what he saw as the institutionalisation and conservatism of state theatre companies, Cramphorn turned to his other great love: cinema. From 1986 until 1989 he studied at the Australian Film, Radio and Television School. His graduating film, The Pursued, was well received.